What Birmingham businesses use aerials for
Birmingham covers 4.8 square miles of land, by the U.S. Census Bureau’s count, and real estate is the most obvious use for aerials here. Agents and builders use drone stills and video to show lot lines, mature trees, the walk to Maple Road and Old Woodward, and how a home sits against Quarton Lake or a park. New custom homes and condominium buildings get the same treatment during construction and at launch.
Downtown, retailers, restaurants and developers use aerials to show a storefront in its setting. Shain Park, on Merrill Street, is what the city calls the heart of Birmingham, with a band shell, a fountain plaza and a Marshall Fredericks statue at its center. It anchors most wide shots of downtown. Beyond the core, the city’s Springdale Golf Course, which the city says was built in the 1920s in the northeast corner, the nine-hole Lincoln Hills course in the southwest, and the Birmingham Museum in the Mill Pond Historic District along the Rouge River give developers and nonprofits green, recognizable backdrops.
Airspace and the airport next door
On FAA data, all of Birmingham is Class G airspace at the surface, with no UAS facility map grids and the Detroit Metro Class B floor at 4,000 feet above sea level over nearly the whole city. Below 400 feet, no LAANC authorization is needed.
The complication is Oakland/Troy Airport. The county-owned field has no control tower, so there is no facility map or LAANC grid around it, but its 3,549-foot runway runs east and west and its west end sits about a third of a mile from Birmingham’s eastern city limit. Planes landing toward the east descend over the city’s east side, including the Rail District along Eton Road, and Part 107 requires drones to yield to them and never interfere with airport traffic. For shoots on that side of town, we add a visual observer whose only job is watching for aircraft, and we land when traffic approaches. On the day of every flight we also check B4UFLY or a LAANC app for temporary restrictions, because airspace changes.
Permits, parks and private land
Michigan’s PA 436 of 2016 keeps cities from regulating drone flight, but it does not settle where you can launch or how a production uses a site. Birmingham issues production filming permits for film or video shoots on public or private property, handled by a film liaison in the planning department, and its application asks for the property owner’s authorization and an insurance binder. Parks and golf courses are city property. Private homes and commercial buildings need the owner’s permission before we launch, land or set up on them.
Light and seasons
Old Woodward runs roughly north and south through downtown and Maple crosses it east and west, so storefronts on the north side of Maple hold light through midday while the south side is best early or late. Quarton Lake reflects best in calm morning air. October color in the older neighborhoods is the most requested window for luxury listings. In December, the Winter Markt lights in Shain Park make dusk flights tempting; Part 107 allows flight at night and in civil twilight with anti-collision lighting visible for three statute miles, and we still keep the aircraft off the crowd.
Planning a Birmingham shoot
Send the address, what the footage is for and a date window. We check airspace, the airport approach path, permits and who controls the launch site, then send a fixed quote. See our Detroit drone photography page for how we fly across the region and real estate drone photography for listing packages. When you are ready, contact us.